How One Feature Changed the Ubisoft Formula – Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora 2 Years Later

December 19th marks a significant day for James Cameron’s Avatar franchise: the world premiere of the third installment, Avatar: Fire and Ash, kicks off. The game from Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft is getting a major update, “From the Ashes,” which continues the story of the new film. We decided to refresh our perspective on the game in 2023, as a major update recently released—even the perspective has changed!

The real Pandora – the real “Avatar”!

The game’s main strength is its graphics—Ubisoft’s artists know their worth. Despite all the company’s problems in recent years, these guys somehow manage to make almost every game look stunning, despite all the other shortcomings. Although in this case, all they had to do was simply replicate the look of the films. But believe me, that’s still something they need to master!

The Na’vi world in Pandora’s Edge feels so real: flora and fauna are tightly intertwined, and every time you fly off on your Ikran toward your next mission, you feel like you’re one with nature. It’s all so beautiful. There are tons of plants you can touch and even collect—all useful for crafting, as are ingredients from the animals you hunt. Cool!

The sound design is also quite authentic—it immerses the player even more deeply in the living world of this planet, and the music, though not very abundant, is emotionally compelling. You can close your eyes and feel the atmosphere of this colorful planet through your skin!

The game’s plot is very simple. There’s an antagonist, who we initially thought was a friend, but is actually an evil villain: he slaughtered the protagonist’s family and clan and now wants to wreak havoc on the planet—all for personal gain. Most of the game—the game takes about 20 hours to complete—is spent traveling through a vast open world, gaining the trust of three Na’vi clans, uniting them, and battling the invader.

The story lacks anything remarkable: banal premise, predictable plot twists, and cardboard characters—people, including those who help the protagonists, often come across as textbook villains with no depth. Even the character who serves as a mentor to the protagonist still instantly presents himself as a villain, despite attempts to soften this.

However, the story’s lack of depth is entirely appropriate. The films’ plots were also fairly generic, especially in the sequel. The narrative in Avatar serves a more nominal purpose—creating context and a pretext to immerse the viewer/player in a wondrous world and sharing its beauty. And in this regard, the project’s plot is quite viable, albeit at times quite absurd. Especially when it comes to logic and the human side of the conflict’s explanation of the world’s structure. And the ending is frankly weak.

Become Na’vi!

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s gameplay is standard fare for most big-budget projects. You explore the open world, fight enemies, complete quests from various NPCs, collect (find or craft) equipment, and level up your skills. There’s even a classic version of Witcher Senses, which highlights everything you need for the quest.

The combat process was reminiscent of Guerrilla Games’ Horizon duology: in Pandora’s Edge, you can also scan enemies, find their weak points, and target them, greatly increasing your damage. You can even destroy them with a single successful hit! And since I loved Horizon Zero Dawn, the combat in Avatar was also very positive!

The player can use the following weapons:

• Three types of bows: heavy – takes a long time to load, but deals high damage; short – has a high rate of fire, but the damage is not very strong; long – has average damage and attack speed;
• two types of trophy weapons: a rifle that fires in automatic mode, but the damage from each bullet is not high, and a shotgun – it does very high damage, especially if you hit it at point-blank range;
• spear thrower;
• a sling that sets traps.

Ammunition for bows, spearguns, and slings can be crafted on the fly if you have the necessary resources, while ammunition for rifles and shotguns must be picked up from defeated enemies or found in crates.

The game also features a hunger mechanic. The character has an energy bar that affects health regeneration: if it’s empty, you won’t be able to heal automatically, but if it’s full, the protagonist can regenerate during combat. All you have to do is hide behind a corner for a few seconds.

To be honest, I didn’t like this feature—it’s not very useful in combat: you could have simply left auto-healing or increased the number of first aid kit slots. And you don’t have time to get hungry during battle, and the food provided during the story is more than enough. The only compelling reason for its inclusion is to justify the existence of cooking, which I only used a couple of times, and only for familiarization and gathering ingredients. In other words, to increase the connection between the player and the world. It’s bearable.

The game’s exploration system is controversial. On the one hand, interacting with the world is very interesting: collecting various resources, hunting, and exploring the world to, for example, avoid plants that can electrocute or poison you. And flying on the aircraft is breathtaking!

But the parkour experience wasn’t a particularly pleasant one. Sometimes everything works well, and you naturally get into the flow, completing the mission in one breath. But this only happens when the game has prepared a path for the player in advance. Otherwise, when it asks you to climb to a height without any explanation—especially at the beginning—the difficulties begin. Here, as they say, you have to figure it out as best you can: if you want, find a vine to climb on; if you want, find a special route; if you want, jump along the edges of trees and cliffs. It’s quite possible to reach the top. It’s not exactly bad, just strange. But it works, and that’s good enough!

The game’s side quests are finally useful! Completing them earns us trade points, which we can use to obtain valuable equipment from the three Na’vi clans—including legendary armor and weapons that significantly boost our strength! It’s just a shame these missions lack variety in gameplay: the typical “go there, find this, kill that” trope. At least the stories are interesting.

Speaking of strength, the game doesn’t have traditional character levels—instead, there are power levels. It’s essentially the same thing, but the difference is in leveling: while in the classic system we earn experience by killing enemies and completing quests, which is how we level up, here we increase our strength through equipment and learned skills. If you remove all your equipment, your power level will plummet. And points for learning abilities are earned directly by completing quests—if you want to fully level up, you’ll have to complete all the quests, including the optional ones! Another point in the usefulness of side missions, albeit a debatable one.

Ubisoft as a synonym for problems

And the game would be fine if it were made by anyone but Ubisoft. Those guys have their own principles they adhere to, which time and again severely impacts the quality of their projects. Frontiers of Pandora has a number of problems that need to be addressed.

The leveling system here is overly intrusive, almost like it was in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey. There, if an enemy is 3-4 levels higher than you, you can kiss your chances of defeating them goodbye—you’ll spend six months battling them, trying to whittle their health down to zero. One or two hits are enough to send you back to a save point! It’s much the same in Avatar—even on the easiest difficulty, a difference of 3-4 levels makes battles a painful ordeal, never mind the higher difficulties.

The problem is that the game sometimes literally forces you to grind these levels—especially if you just want to complete the main story, as there’s often a gap of recommended level between two missions. Just when I was rejoicing at the end of one mid-game mission, having found a shotgun that made me feel like the Terminator, the very next mission would literally obliterate me with a couple of hits. And once I’d spent a few hours leveling up, I could face-tank an entire army of enemies. There’s no balance here.

The distribution of gameplay activities is also a bit lacking. Sometimes the game forces us to fight hordes of enemies for extended periods, sometimes we spend hours exploring locations, solving the same puzzle over and over again. Towards the end, the hacking minigame becomes downright nauseating! At least the atmosphere saves the day—at times, I was overcome with nostalgia for Horizon: Zero Dawn. Especially when we explore an abandoned laboratory to learn more about ourselves and the lore of the current conflict.

The game lacks variety. We’re sent to clear enemy outposts every other time at the beginning, every other time at the end. We fight the same soldiers in exosuits at the beginning, every other time at the end—there are very few new enemy types! The enemy bases themselves, as well as the missions within them, are all identical: you have to turn off switches and shut off valves everywhere—the only difference is the enemy level! There are many outposts in the game—scattered all over the map! If you want to clear the game 100%, be prepared!

Stealth and cover are broken in the game. If you’re too lazy to level up, you can still complete a stealth mission—the game offers that option, right? Yes, but enemies sometimes behave very strangely: sometimes they don’t see you point-blank, sometimes they spot you even when you can’t see them with your senses! Perhaps it’s a matter of height; Na’vi are much taller than humans and have a harder time hiding, right?

The same goes for cover. Often in battle, I’d hide from enemy bullets using the landscape and other obstacles, but I’d still take damage—was it really that long blue head that was preventing me from hiding from view again?

If you want, you can completely break the enemy AI. Alternatively, each base has an underground passage that’s perfect for sneaking in. But no one’s stopping you from exiting it, firing a few shots, and ducking back—no one will come after you!

Two years of aging

In the two years since its release, the developers have made significant improvements. First and foremost, they’ve improved the technical aspects—while the game could previously experience frame rate drops even on PS5, this is now a no-brainer on the console. There were a few hiccups, of course, but those are exceptions to the rule. In any case, playing has become much more enjoyable! The only downside is that the graphics sometimes drop—especially in the rain. Most importantly, they’ve eliminated invisible walls, crashes, and serious freezes, and improved stability.

The game also features a “New Game+” mode, allowing you to replay the main story at a higher difficulty level, which introduces new enemies and unlocks additional story elements.

But the main innovation of the latest updates is the ability to switch to third-person view—previously, you could only play in first-person. And it feels pretty much like The Elder Scrolls series: strange. Even though the developers have adapted combat for third-person, fighting here is still significantly more enjoyable in first-person—aiming is much easier, especially when you need to hit a weak spot.

The new perspective can still be used when exploring—despite the external curvature, it sometimes provides a much better view of the surrounding environment and makes it easier to navigate. True, the third-person animations sometimes look awkward and still don’t fully capture the character’s movements—they barely show the protagonist clinging to ledges, for example.

Diagnosis

Even two years later, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora feels like a strange project. The game completely immerses you in the world of James Cameron’s films—in his magnificent Pandora. And new features like the third-person perspective only deepen the overall atmosphere—while it may look ridiculous, it’s sometimes a lifesaver. Even the silly plot doesn’t hurt, as the films weren’t exactly brilliant!

But the issues with the leveling system and gameplay balance easily bring you back down to Earth and make you curse at the monitor. If the project hadn’t been made under Ubisoft’s auspices, who knows, maybe these flaws wouldn’t have existed? Or maybe I’m just too biased against the French…

In any case, I’ll say that once I got over the leveling issues and got used to some of the game’s features, I started enjoying the gameplay. I’ll happily return to the virtual Pandora again to check out the new expansion. I highly recommend it to all fans of the franchise, even after two years! Just be prepared for some shortcomings.

Pro

• Excellent graphics and superb art design.
• Good sound accompaniment.
• Interesting combat system.
• The game perfectly immerses you in the world of Avatar.

Contra

• A banal plot.
• Problem with level and gameplay balance.